Postcard from Provence

One of my very favourite blogs - and probably the reason why I started getting into blogging - is "Postcard from Provence", a diary in paintings.

Julian Merrow-Smith has lived in Provence for the last 8 years or so in a tiny village called Crillon le Brave. He describes his blog as

an ongoing project involving painting and posting a small oil painting, mostly daily, in which I try to reflect the changing seasons and light of my adoptive home in Provence.

and

The idea for this site germinated over the winter of 2004/2005, in no small measure due to the arrival of ADSL in the provençal countryside, my interest in webdesign, webstandards and blogging and finally, stumbling across the enormously successful site of one Duane Keiser

Julian's (almost always) daily paintings are delightful and extremely accomplished. He's now completed about 300 and I look forward to them dropping into my e-mail inbox every day and am very rarely disappointed. This could be because they very often feature food!

And today I received a newsletter from him. He describes the project as an enormous success with the site now getting 1,000 visitors a day!!! All I know is his small paintings priced at $100 sell extremely quickly. And a quick glance through his galleries reveal an awful lot of red spots!

However the big news is that 'Postcard from Provence' is to be profiled in the home section of the New York Times on Thursday 23rd Feb.

Julian's main website and his other blog "A Painter's Journal" and are also listed in the right hand column. Take a look - you won't be disappointed.

Duane Keiser's blog "A Painting a Day" is also listed in my blogroll. As with Julian - if you've not seen Duane's work before do take a look - his subjects are a little different and often surprising though, although for me I often think of him as the master of the broken egg!

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